Of Chicken Sandwiches, Free Speech and Cheap Politicians

The people who run the fast food chain Chick-fil-A are serious Christians. They close their 1,608 restaurants on Sundays even though they lose a huge amount of revenue doing so. The President of Chick-fil-A has spoken out against gay marriage. As a result Democrat politicians, who have as much understanding of freedom of speech as they do morality, have decided to punish a legal business.

First up was Thomas Menino, mayor of Boston, who sent an unintentionally hilarious letter to the president of the company. This Boston Herald editorial noted the humor:

Next up was Chicago’s mayor Rahm Emanuel, former Chief of Staff of President Obama. Ben Shapiro at Breitbart gives us the details:

The unemployment rate in the city of Chicago is approximately 9.8 percent, well above the national average. Since Monday night, one 17-year-old boy has been shot and 13 others have been wounded in shootings across the city. And that’s just the most recent wave of shootings to plague the city – dozens more have been shot over the last few weeks.

And Mayor Rahm Emanuel is taking action: he’s banning Chick-Fil-A.

The fast-food chicken restaurant has come under increasing fire from major Democratic politicians including Emanuel and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, both of whom have pledged to keep the dreaded chain from poisoning the minds of their constituents. Said Emanuel: “They disrespect our fellow neighbors and residents. This would be a bad investment, since it would be empty.”

What exactly did Chick-Fil-A do to “disrespect” its neighbors? The president of the company, Dan Cathy, gave an interview in which he stated, “We don’t claim to be a Christian business … [Christianity] is about a personal relationship. Companies are not lost or saved, but certainly individuals are. But as an organization we can operate on biblical principles. So that is what we claim to be.” And he added with regard to the company’s support of WinShape Foundation, “That morphed into a marriage program in conjunction with national marriage ministries.” Does the company support the traditional family? Said Cathy, “guilty as charged … We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family unit ….”

Go here to read the rest. Emanuel was right about one thing. He said that Chick-fil-A does not comport with “Chicago values”. As far as I can tell as a life long resident of Illinois, Chicago values as typified by Chicago politicians consist of extreme political corruption and the constant shakedown of businesses and individuals for graft. No, I do not think that Chick-fil-A is on board with that.

Leftist Democrat politicians have absolutely no hesitation in attempting to use the power of the State to bludgeon individuals and businesses holding views contrary to their own. These people are enemies of any concept of a free society, and the rest of us better wake up to what is going on in this nation quickly, or the only practical freedom we will possess is to nod our heads on cue for any cause that those politicians deem useful to support in order to gain votes.

I hardly need any further encouragement to consume Chik-fil-a, but this only makes me crave the original w/ a side of waffle fries even more. It would be interesting for CFA to take them to the courts on this. Even if they lost, it would then set a precedent for banning liberal supporting businesses like Starbucks.

I am kind of wondering what Richard J. Daley, who was a daily communicant, would make of using municipal regulations to harrass people opposed (incidental to their business) to disfiguring matrimonial law or promoting sodomy.

Remember when emblematic liberals were nice guys like George McGovern and Allard Loewenstein?

Pieter Viereck nailed it: the notable problem with the liberal is his grandson.

The insanity of all of this is really hard for me to grasp. How can someone speak out of both sides of thier mouths and continue to get a pass? Free Speech means eactly what? Agree with me or else! Venerable Sheen said that (paraphrase here) tolorance of people is absolutely paramount but tolorane of principles can not be accepted. I can look up the exact quote but the point is clear. It seems that the dynamic shift they want is a shift that they think is “progressive” but in reality it is regressive. Welcome back to the age of paganism that rules..

I live close to two Chik-fil-a stores. The food is excellent, the staff is very friendly and it is always clean. It is a really nice place to eat.

It is really quite frightening what is going on. The complete hypocrisy would be amusing if it wasn’t so scary. Watching all of this happen makes me feel like I am in a bad dream, saying to myself “this can’t be happening” and hoping I wake up.

Chik-fil cannot attain to the first-grade of the “Chicago way” for the ballerina, unless the duty managers went around stabbing patrons with wishbones while screaming “You’re dead!!”. True mastery of the “Chicago way” though will come only by emulating Emmanuel senior, one time scourge of the transportation and hotel industries in Palestine.

As a fellow Chicagoan (and a lover of food-things chicken) I have to laugh at Rahm.

It’s pretty great that whenever someone disagrees with their agenda (or grab at votes) they are called discriminatory, mean-spirited or whatever. I guess the only true tolerance for them is apathy or agreement with them. Very nice.